# Theses and Dissertations
**Source**: https://anthro.ucla.edu/academics/graduate/theses-and-dissertations/
**Parent**: https://anthro.ucla.edu/
### Booklets – M.A. Recipients & Ph.D. Graduates
- [2024-25](https://anthro.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/MA-and-PhD-Grads-Booklet-2024-25-for-Anthro-website.pdf)
- [2023-24](https://anthro.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/MA_PhD-Grads-2023-24.pdf)
- [2022-23](https://anthro.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MA-PhD-Grads-2022-23.pdf)
- [2021-22](https://anthro.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/MA-PhD-Grads-2021-22.pdf)
- [2019-20, 2020-21, Summer 2021](https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/ma-phd-2021.pdf)
2024-25 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
## Master’s Theses & Reports
**Brenda de Groot, M.A.**\
Patterns and Dynamics of Infant Transfers in Hatinh Langurs (Trachypithecus hatinhensis) and Delacour’s Langurs (T. delacouri)\
*Chair: H. Clark Barrett**, Ph.D.*
**Isabella Ding, M.A.**\
Cyborg Metrics: Biopower, Race, and the Political Economy of Biometric Surveillance\
*Chair: Purnima Mankekar, Ph.D.*
**Aiko Dzikowski, M.A.**\
Japanese American Princess: A Linguistic Anthropological Approach to Transnational Identity, Political Ideology, and Pageantry within the Nikkei Community\
*Chair: Paul Kroskrity, Ph.D.*
**Erick Matus, M.A.**\
Puttin it on the Map: Rap Music, Gentrification, and the Lyrical Cartography of Los Angeles\
*Co-Chairs: H. Samy Alim, Ph.D. and Jason De León, Ph.D.*
**Edson Morales Sanchez, M.A.**\
The Logics of a Pro-Housing Organization: YIMBY and its (Im)potence\
*Co-Chairs: Philippe Bourgois, Ph.D. and Laurie Kain Hart, Ph.D.*
**Carolyn Park, M.A.**\
Language as/at Work: Metapragmatic Awareness Among Koreatown’s Restaurant Workers\
*Chair: Norma Mendoza-Denton, Ph.D.*
**Cathy Román, M.A.**\
‘The Birthkeeper within Us’: Analyzing Los Angeles’ Birthworkers of Color Communities through the History of Obstetrics in the United States\
*Chair: Ippolytos Kalofonos, Ph.D.*
**Sienna Ruiz, M.A.**\
Externalized Bodies: Migration, Affect, and the Politics of Care in the Mexican Refugee System\
*Chair: Jason De León, Ph.D.*
**Kasey Schleper, M.A.**\
Exploring the Structural Relationship Between Acculturation, Support, and Breastfeeding among Puerto Rican Mothers Living in the Mainland US\
*Chair: Brooke Scelza, Ph.D.*
**Mason Smith, M.A.**\
These Cows Are My Children: Biotechnology and Agrarian Labor in Kazakhstan\
*Co-Chairs: Nancy Levine, Ph.D. and Christopher Kelty, Ph.D.*
## Doctoral Dissertations
**Bader Mohammad Alfarhan, Ph.D.**\
Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport, Ph.D. and Jemima Pierre, Ph.D.
**Burcu Buğu, Ph.D.**\
Navigating State Power: Urban Space, Memory, and Affect in Dersim, Turkey\
Chair: Salih Can Açiksöz, Ph.D.
**Stephanie Keeney Parks, Ph.D.**\
“Gaming the System”: How Black Families Navigate “Autism” at the Intersection of Race and Disability\
Chair: H. Samy Alim, Ph.D.
**Daniel Kennedy, Ph.D.**\
No Place Like Home: Dwelling, Relationality, and Resistance with Unhoused Kansans\
Co-Chairs: C. Jason Throop, Ph.D. and Helena Hansen, MD, Ph.D.
**Jeremy Levenson, Ph.D.**\
Breaking the Chains from Inside: Los Angeles’ Carceral Psychiatric Fix and Jail (Dis-)Alienation\
Chair: Philippe Bourgois, Ph.D.
**Karime Parodi Ambel, Ph.D.**\
Gendering Justice in the Chilean Courts: Legal Actors’ Perspectives and Unequal Access to Justice\
Co-Chairs: Laurie Kain Hart, Ph.D. and M. Kamari Clarke, Ph.D.
**Kimberly Zhu, Ph.D.**\
Multi-Omic Investigations of Human Adaptations to High-Altitude Hypoxia in the Himalayas and Andes\
Chair: Abigail Bigham, Ph.D.
2023-24 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
## Master’s Theses & Reports
**Elizabeth Arnold, M.A.**\
Unveiling Diasporic Markets: An Archaeology of Consumption in California’s Chinatowns\
*Chair: Monica L. Smith, Ph.D.*
**Natalie Finnegan, M.A.**\
Mitochondrial DNA for phylogeny building: Assessing individual and grouped mtGenes as proxies for the mtGenome in platyrrhines\
*Chair: Jessica Lynch, Ph.D.*
**Thomas Gabriel Gerz, M.A.**\
Colonialism; Language Ideologies; Linguistic Landscape; Ryukyuan Languages; US Military & Okinawa\
*Chair: Erin Debenport, Ph.D.*
**Sophie Elizabeth Klitgaard, M.A.**\
An Evolutionary Approach to Privacy\
*Co-Chairs: H. Clark Barrett, Ph.D. and Daniel Fessler, Ph.D.*
**Leroy F. Moore, M.A.**\
Krip-Hop Nation: Community-Based Education at the Intersection of Blackness & Disability\
*Co-Chairs: H. Samy Alim, Ph.D. and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Ph.D.*
## Doctoral Dissertations
**Vincent M. Belletto, Ph.D.**\
Attitudes of Loss: A Phenomenological Analysis of Identity, Cultural Shift, and Language Death Among the Unserdeutsch Creole German Community of Australia\
*Chair: C. Jason Throop, Ph.D.*
**Blake Erickson, Ph.D.**\
Challenges to Psychiatric Care: A Clinical and Anthropological Analysis of Psychosis and Dependency\
*Chair: Laurie Kain Hart, Ph.D.*
**Aditi Anand Halbe, Ph.D.**\
Trademarks of Tradition: Artisan Labor, Development and Place making in Rural India\
*Chair: Akhil Gupta, Ph.D.*
**Delaney Knorr, Ph.D.**\
Embodied experiences: a mixed-methods approach to understanding stress and resilience in Latina mothers\
*Chair: Molly Fox, Ph.D.*
**Naakoshie Awurama Mills, Ph.D.**\
Cultures of Foreign Policymaking: State Department Diplomats and Race in US-Africa Strategy\
*Chair: Laurie Kain Hart, Ph.D.*
**Molly Theodora Billings Oringer, Ph.D.**\
Spatial Relations: Post-War Reconstruction and the Afterlives of Jewish Terrains in Lebanon\
*Co-Chairs: Laurie Kain Hart, Ph.D. and Susan Slyomovics, Ph.D.*
**Rachel Parks, Ph.D.**\
Translating Pain, Communicating Care: Representing Expertise, Kinship, and Disability Through the DisDAT Form\
*Chair: C. Jason Throop, Ph.D.*
**Reuven Sinensky, Ph.D.**\
Early Agriculture and Indigenous Foodways in the US Southwest and Mesoamerica: Cuisine and Social Change in Mobile Farming Societies\
*Chair: Gregson Schachner, Ph.D.*
**Jaime Vela, Ph.D.**\
Diabetes Prevention Strategies for the Diné: Cultural Learning to Implement change. A Qualitative Study\
*Chair: Russell Thornton, Ph.D.*
**Sasha Lutz Winkler, Ph.D.**\
Evolutionary Perspectives on Play and Laughter\
*Co-Chairs: Erica Cartmill, Ph.D. and Susan Perry, Ph.D.*
**Haoyan Zhuang, Ph.D.**\
Collective Individualization: Co-living among Youth in Contemporary China\
*Co-Chairs: Nancy E. Levine, Ph.D. and Yunxiang Yan, Ph.D.*
2022-23 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
## ***Master’s Theses & Reports***
**Madison Aubey, MA**
The Archaeology of Sovereignty: Africatown, Black Mobile, and Resistive Consumption
*Chair: Justin P. Dunnavant*
**Amber Kela Chong, MA**
Experiments in Sovereignty: Cultivating ʻĀina Momona at Waipā
*Chair: Jessica Cattelino*\
**Dani Heffernan, MA**
Constructing the “Cisgender Listening Subject”: Trans-Feminine Speakers’ Commentaries on Voice and Being Heard
*Chair: Norma Mendoza-Denton*\
**Sally Li, MA**
Racial and temporal differences in fertility-education tradeoffs highlight the effect of economic opportunities on optimum family size in the US
*Chair: Brooke Scelza*\
**Robin Stevland Meyer-Lorey, MA**
Manifest Destiny in Southeast Asia: Archaeology of American Colonial Industry in the Philippines, 1898-1987
*Chair: Stephen Acabado*\
**Victoria Newhall, MA.**
Evaluating the Role of Foodways During Large-Scale Socio-Political Transformations at Formative Tres Zapotes
*Co-Chairs: Richard Lesure and Gregson Schachner*\
**Wanda Quintanilla Duran, MA**
*Chair: Jason De León*\
The Force of Intimacy in a Honduran Community
**Nicole Smith, M.A.**
From Exile to Eviction: Garífuna Indigeneity, Land Rights, and Heritage in Roatán, Honduras
*Co-Chairs: Jason De León and Justin Dunnavant*
## ***Doctoral Dissertations***
**Steven Ammerman, PhD**
Human-Animal Interaction at the Ancient Urban Site of Sisupalgarh, India
*Chair: Monica L. Smith*
**Spencer Chao-Long Chen, PhD**
Dubbing Ideologies: The Politics of Language and Acoustic Aesthetics in Taiwan’s Mandarin-Voiceover Production
*Chair: Paul V. Kroskrity*
**Kristine Joy Chua, PhD**
Environmental, Biological, and Cultural Influences on Health and Behavior
*Chair: Abigail Bigham*
**Rodney R. Gratreaks Jr., PhD**
Talking to the Wind: Towards an Understanding of Numic Verbal Art and Language Planning in the Village of Shaxwapats
*Chair: Paul V. Kroskrity*
**Emily Virginia Jones, PhD**
A Violent Operation: Trauma Surgery, Policing, and the Politics of Care in a Los Angeles County Public Hospital
*Chair: Laurie Kain Hart*
**Sucharita Kanjilal, PhD**
Home Chefs: Indian Households Produce for the Global Creator Economy
*Chair: Akhil Gupta*
**Andrew E. MacIver, Ph.D.**
The Shang-Zhou Transition: Immanence, Power, and the Micropolitics of Encounter
*Chair: Li Min*
**Joshua L. Mayer, PhD**
Conjuring Territory: Afro-Indigenous Authority and Settler Capitalism in Nicaragua
*Chair: Shannon Speed*
**Bianca Romagnoli, PhD**
Patrolling North of 60: Military Infrastructure in Canada’s Arctic Communities
*Co-Chairs: Salih Can Açiksöz and Laurie Kain Hart*
**Theodore Samore, PhD**
Traditionalism, Pathogen Avoidance, and Competing Tradeoffs During a Global Threat
*Chair: Daniel M.T. Fessler*
**William James Schlesinger, PhD**
The Production and Governance of Risky Sexual Subjectivity in the Era of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) to HIV
*Chair: Salih Can Açiksöz*
**Saliem Wakeem Shehadeh, PhD**
Researching the General Union of Palestine Students from the Diaspora
*Co-Chairs: Jemima Pierre and Susan Slyomovics*
**Madeleine Amee Yakal, PhD**
Spanish Colonialism in Bikol, Philippines: Localizing Devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia
*Chair: Stephen Acabado*
2021-22 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
## ***Master’s Theses & Reports***
**Emilia Rose Ørsted Holmbeck, MA**
Contextualizing PTSD as Diagnosis and Intervention: Situating Trauma and the Subjective Experience of Suffering in Locally Meaningful Worlds
*Co-Chairs: Douglas W. Hollan & Linda Garro*\
**Jewell Ruth-Ella Humphrey, MA**
Harboring History: A Maritime Archaeological Analysis of an 18th Century Shipwreck in Coral Bay, St. Jan
*Co-Chairs: Stephen Acabado & Justin Dunnavant*\
**Lillian Kohn, MA**
Public Mourning, Online Spaces: Virtual Memorialization and Binational Grief in Israel-Palestine
*Chair: Susan Slyomovics*\
**NaaKoshie Awurama Mills, MA**
Par for the Corps: Black Diplomats and Race in U.S. Foreign Policy
*Chair: Laurie Hart*\
**Abdullah Puckett, MA**
Decarceration and Social Justice Activism in South Central LA
*Chair: Philippe Bourgois*
\
**Matthew James Schneider, MA**
Against Accountability: Policing and Public Knowledge in Los Angeles
*Chair: Hannah Appel*\
**Doğa Tekin, MA**
Claiming Big Sur: How Places Enter Semiosis
*Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity*\
**Kimberly Tanya Zhu, MA**
Genomic Features Underlying Andean High-Altitude Adaptive Hemoglobin Levels
*Chair: Abigail Bigham*\
## ***Doctoral Dissertations***
**Brittany Nicole Florkiewicz, PhD**
Properties of Facial Signaling in Captive Chimpanzees (*Pan troglodytes*)
*Chair: Brooke Scelza*\
\
**Yanina Gori, PhD**
Re/mediating Revolution: Cultivating Solidarity in a Cuban Queer Community
*Co-Chairs: Hannah Appel & C. Jason Throop*\
**Jananie Kalyanaraman, PhD**
Window seats: Making connection through transport and mobility in Bengaluru city, India
*Chair: Akhil Gupta*
\
**Eva Rose Melstrom, PhD**
The Gate of Weeping: Ethiopian Women Returning from Domestic Work in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf
*Co-Chairs: Douglas W. Hollan & C. Jason Throop*\
**Zachary Mondesire, PhD**
Region-craft: An Ethnography of South Sudan’s Transnational Intelligentsia
*Chair: Hannah Appel*\
**Lauren Textor, PhD**
Deserving Abandonment: Governing Pain and Addiction across U.S. Opioid Landscapes
*Co-Chairs: Philippe Bourgois & Laurie Hart*
2020-21 Theses and Dissertations
## ***Master’s Theses***
**Sara Isabel Castro Font, MA**
Hipsters, Drunks, Tourists, and Locals: Calle Loíza as a Site of Ideological Contestation
*Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity*
**Lilit Ghazaryan, MA**
Speak Beautifully – Language Policies and Practices in Public Kindergartens in Armenia
*Chair: Erica Cartmill*
**Nicco Amedeo La Mattina, MA**
“Giving the Meaning” as a Social Practice on Pantelleria: The Metasemantics of Atttunement
*Chair: Alessandro Duranti*
**Alessandra May Laurer Rosen, MA**
Semiotic Labors of Personalization: Modernization and Access in an American Yoga School
*Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity*
**Danielle Leigh Steinberg, MA**
A robust tool kit: first report of tool use in crested capuchin monkeys (*Sapajus robustus*)
*Chair: Jessica Lynch*
**Jessie Serene Stoolman, MA**
Writing Letters and Reading against the Grain of Anthropology’s Past
*Chair: Aomar Boum*
**Donghyoun We, MA**
Food and Restaurants: A Review of the Literature and Exploratory Observations of Restaurant Pivots in LA in the Time of COVID-19
*Chair: Akhil Gupta*
**Madeleine Louise Zoeller, MA**
Eye See You: Investigating Predictors of the Evil Eye
*Chair: Joseph Manson*
## ***Doctoral Dissertations***
**Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie, PhD**
The Pursuit of Happiness and the Other: Being a Syrian Refugee Child in America
*Co-Chairs: Alessandro Duranti & C. Jason Throop*
**Theresa Hill Arriola, PhD**
Securing Nature: Militarism, Indigeneity and the Environment in the Northern Mariana Islands
*Chair: Jessica Cattelino*
**Yael Assor, PhD**
Objectivity as a Bureaucratic Virtue: The Lived Experience of Objectivity in an Israeli Medical Bureaucracy
*Chair: C. Jason Throop*
**Amanda Jean Bailey, PhD**
Alluvial Hope: The Transformative Practices of Placemaking at a Montana Tribal College
*Co-Chairs: Paul V. Kroskrity & Cheryl Mattingly*
**Hannah Addaline Carlan, PhD**
Producing Prosperity: Language and the Labor of Development in India’s Western Himalayas
*Chair: Alessandro Duranti*
**Alejandro Suleman Erut, PhD**
Lying: an anthropological approach
*Chair: H. Clark Barrett*
**Nafis Aziz Hasan, PhD**
Techno-politics of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) – Investigating Practices and Social Relations in Indian Public Bureaucracies
*Chair: Akhil Gupta*
**Tanya Ruth Matthan, PhD**
The Monsoon and the Market: Economies of Risk in Rural India
*Chair: Akhil Gupta*
**Agatha Evangeline Palma, PhD**
The Migrant, The Mediterranean, and the Tourist: Figures of Belonging in Post-Austerity Palermo
*Co-Chairs: Aomar Boum & Laurie Kain Hart*
**Sonya Rao, PhD**
Privatizing Language Work: Interpreters and Access in Los Angeles Immigration Court
*Chair: Paul V. Kroskrity*
**Alexander Malcolm Thomson, PhD**
Mesologues: An Ethnobibliographic Study of Cultural and Lingual Politics in Contemporary Brittany
*Co-Chairs: Laurie Kain Hart & Paul V. Kroskrity*
2019-20 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
## ***Master’s Theses & Reports***
**Ulises Espinoza, MA**
Intuitions on Ownership Among the Achuar of Southeastern Ecuador
*Chair: H. Clark Barrett*
**Eden Franz, MA**
Cultural and Interspecific Symbiosis at Salemi, Sicily: Exploring Colonial and Human-Animal Interactions Through Faunal Analysis
*Chair: Monica L. Smith*
**Joelle Julien, MA**
Haitian Migration to Tijuana, Mexico: Black Migrants and the Political Economy of Race and Migration
*Chair: Jemima Pierre*
**Eric Andrew Sinski, MA**
Imagined Communities: Patriotic Sentiment Among Chinese Students Abroad in the Era of Xi Jinping
*Chair: Yunxiang Yan*
**Sasha Lutz Winkler, MA**
The Development of Sex Differences in Play in Wild White-Faced Capuchins
*Chair: Erica Cartmill*
## ***Doctoral Dissertations***
**Katelyn Jo Bishop, PhD**
Ritual Practice, Ceremonial Organization, and the Value and Use of Birds in Prehispanic Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 800-1150 CE
*Co-Chairs: Richard Lesure & Gregson Schachner*
**Molly Josette Bloom, PhD**
Thick Sociality: Community, Disability, and Language in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation
*Chair: Norma Mendoza-Denton*
**Courtney Evelyn Cecale, PhD**
Scientific Governance and the Cultural Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in the Peruvian Andes
*Chair: Jessica Cattelino*
**Amy Marie Garey, PhD**
The People’s Laughter: War, Comedy, and the Soviet Legacy
*Chair: Nancy E. Levine*
**Kotrina Kajokaite, PhD**
Social relationships in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys (*Cebus capucinus*): Insights from new modeling approaches
*Chair: Susan Perry*
**Matthew Richard McCoy, PhD**
Unsettling Futures: Morality, Time, and Death in a Divided Belfast Community
*Chair: C. Jason Throop*
**Dalila Isoke Ozier, PhD**
City of Magic: Aesthetic Value in the Los Angeles Magic Scene
*Chair: Sherry B. Ortner*
**Mindy Gayle Steinberg, PhD**
Legal Status and the Everyday Lives of Mexican-Origin Youth in Los Angeles: Family, Gratitude, and the High School Transition
*Chair: Thomas S. Weisner*
**Christopher Shawn Stephan, PhD**
“Focus on the Users”: Empathy, Anticipation, and Perspective-Taking in Healthcare Architecture
*Chair: C. Jason Throop*
**Anoush Tamar Suni, PhD**
Palimpsests of Violence: Ruination and the Politics of Memory in Anatolia
*Chair: Susan Slyomovics*
**Gwyneth Ursula Jean Talley, PhD**
Gunpowder Women: Gender, Kinship & Horses in Moroccan Equestrian Performance
*Co-Chairs: Nancy E. Levine & Susan Slyomovics*